Parenting not for wimps: Doctor
Psychologist writes book full of advice that urges tough love
Quit telling your six-year old he’s amazing because he’s not.
It’s gruff, no-nonsense advice like this that packs the pages of Dr. Henry Svec’s book Don’t be a Wimp: Raise a Strong Leader. His recently published book blames gutless parents for the fact today’s kids are growing up with an “outrageous sense of entitlement.”
Instead of coddling kids, the clinical psychologist says parents should: Tell them No with regularity. Make them work starting at a young age.
Discipline them to show who’s boss. Teach them to play to win. And never, ever, be their friend. “It’s not that complicated, but it takes courage,” says Svec, who has clinics in Windsor, London, Chatham and Sarnia, and began thinking about writing this book several years ago when he began noticing disturbing trends in society. Teachers of young kids would tell him about spending months training them to be respectful and learn what No means.
A high-school coach recounted how an athlete refused to go into the game because it was already a lost cause. Other teachers complained about older children refusing to put down their cellphones and texting answers back and forth during tests.
He spoke to a university professor who was retiring early because he was tired of getting calls from parents fighting to get their kids better marks.
He blames all this bad behaviour on parents “who just don’t understand how to parent their children with discipline.”
So Svec selected six Canadian “leaders” including a Paralympian, a real estate mogul and football coach.
Two of them he knew well, two he barely knew and two he didn’t know at all, and they were all people you’d be proud to have as your children, he said. He interviewed them to learn how they were raised.
“The point of the book is, how were they parented? How did they get to be that great a person?,” said Svec. And here’s what he learned: “There was discipline.” In almost all the cases, there was some form of corporal punishment. “Even just once, there was a spanking, just to show who’s boss,” he said.
They were required to work, doing jobs at home and outside the home, starting as young as age four or five.
They also played to win, contrary to the current thinking in minor sports and schools, where everyone wins, everyone gets a participation medal. “They were taught there are certain times in life you play for fun and there are other times when you win or lose and that’s how children learn to win and lose,” said Svec. “Six-yearolds are told they’re wonderful and great. Well, they’re not wonderful and great.”
They learned by their parents’ example. Children soak up what they witness. “So if you don’t want your child to live their life like a victim, don’t act like that,” he said. “It’s all about what you do.”
They heard No quite a bit. “They didn’t get everything they wanted.”
Many people these days don’t hear No until they’re adults, said Svec, who said parents are “wimps” because they don’t know they can stand up to their kids.
He sees people in his practice quite frequently who tell him: “I can take my child’s cellphone? I can stop my child from hitting me?”
He said psychologists have told too many people that the best approach is to just be nice to children all the time.
“I think that’s doing them an injustice.”
Svec said you can do everything wrong and still end up with a great child, or do everything right and end up with a “very challenging” child, because probably half of the factors — like genetics and random chance — are beyond a parent’s control.
“But I think at least if you can cover off as much of that other 50 per cent as you can by parenting with courage, your child has a better chance of doing amazing things when they’re adults.”